At least one online report has suggested that knowledge of this phone’s award and impending launch is what prompted Steve Jobs to launch the iPhone months before it was ready, sparking off frenzied global speculation and headlines.

For all the attention that both phones are getting, it’s important to remember that phones with touch screens are nothing new – Motorola has had them for years, as have Palm and a host of phones running Windows Mobile for Pocket PC. Even LG has already used touch technology, although not on the screen, with last year’s popular ‘Chocolate’ branded LG phone.

But both the iPhone and the LG Prada claim to effectively be buttonless, despite both actually having buttons, with the iPhone having one and the LG having what looks to be three buttons. Despite this, LG are claiming to have launched the world’s first completely touch screen mobile phone. Ah, the wonders of marketing, eh?

Of course the big difference with the iPhone and the LG Prada is the big touch screen where most of the action takes place, including dialing numbers and activating features such as the mp3 player, text messaging, video viewing and more.

We’re all very familiar with what the iPhone has – and doesn’t have. So what’s in the LG Prada?

It has a 2 megapixel camera with a Schneider-Kreuznach lens, a music player (capable of playing mp3, AAC, AAC+, WMA and RA files), a video player (capable of playing mpeg4, H.263 and H.264 files), a document reader (that can handle ppt, doc, xls, pdf and txt files), and a microSD memory slot to add extra storage – something the iPhone should have included. At 12mm thin, it’s just 0.4mm thicker than the iPhone, while the capacitive touch screen is 3 inches.

We know that the user interface is powered by Flash, so there’s hope that the web browser is Flash compatible as well. It’s not a 3G phone, but one that’s compatible with EDGE and GSM on the tri-band frequencies of 900/1800/1900 Mhz).  The camera uses an LED flash and the phone comes with Bluetooth 2.0, although we don’t yet know if this is A2DP compatible for stereo Bluetooth music streaming. The phone also has a USB 2.0 interface.

What else is missing, and what else is included? Read onto page 2 for the conclusion...